Democrats have shut down the government.

Tuesday

Oct 1, 2013 at 12:01 AM

I speculate on whether the Democrats shut down the government.

William Dameron

October 1 rolls around every year, beginning a new fiscal year that has to be funded by act of Congress. The government funding works a year at a time, normally. But, our government is a leaderless ship, like an Italian cruise liner. Democrats haven’t seen fit to do budgeting, planning, or fiscal reform since before Big Barry took office. So, we have to have a continuing resolution to keep the government going. They always wait until the last possible moment to get one passed.

According to the Constitution, the US House of Representatives has the power of the purse. Only they can create a bill allowing the federal government to spend money. Fortunately, they did their job. They passed a bill fully funding the government from October 1 until December 15. Assuming Harry Reid and the Democrats saw fit to take up the bill, vote to pass it, and assuming the lead Democrat, President Obama, signed it into law, we’re safely funded for another 11 weeks. Whew, that was close!

Of course, the Democrats didn't pass the House's bill. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, chose to ignore the continuing resolution passed by the House, and so the government DID shut down. The House had added a couple of reasonable riders to the bill: delay Obamacare for a year, and eliminate the odious Obamacare tax on medical devices. Harry Reid decided the Senate wouldn’t take up the House bill because it had those riders. He had his caucus strip out the riders from the bill and send it back to the House to vote on again. Having written this on Monday, the last day before October 1, I assume the government is shut down, and Harry did it. Or, they could have passed it and sent it to Barry, and he could have vetoed it to shut down the government.

I'm sure Reid DID send the bill back to the House, thus shutting down the government until the House does exactly what he wants. But the House members have done their job. They should just add the riders again and send it back to the Senate. It reminds me of a game called ping-pong.

If you assume the members of the House are tired of giving in to the Democrats, perhaps they’ll hold the line and until the Democrats accept the riders. It’s more likely they’ll cave. You can’t play ping-pong without balls.